Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [63]
And then as the doorknob rumbled in its turning, the servant-woman pushed Smoll wholly through the divide, the magicked aperture between the times, back into his rightful night. As she and her era fell away, as she shrank, she tore the necklace off and flung it after him. Soundlessly it splashed against the intervening time as against a window between herself and Smoll. She watched in dismay as it fell, and the door opened behind her no bigger than a playing card now, and the dark opening swallowed up woman and beads and attic and all.
The two times snapped apart to their proper distances; Smoll felt the event of that, in his ears and in the punching of air into his throat and lungs. Somewhere between sprawled and sitting, he stared from his rumpled bed, out into a darkness utterly free of reverberations. No dread sang there, and no historical glee resounded. No weight sat bead by bead around his neck or ached against his breastbone. There was only Smoll in his eyrie, the odor of Cook’s salve, warm from his exertions, clouding up from the neck of his nightshirt, the light of the moon pouring down on him from the window.
Afterword to “The Proving of Smollett Standforth”
“The Proving of Smollett Standforth” started out as a more alt-history, regularly steampunkish story about an upper-middle-class boy and his sister. The story was told from her point of view, and the boy was brought near to death by the ghost’s visitations, but the sister was the one who vanquished the evil amber-necklace-bearing ghost-chambermaid in the end. That version had an extra romance, a seaside holiday, many tea palaces and decorative floral arrangements throughout, but it always felt to me as if I was playing around with these pretty things slightly to one side of the real story.
Coming back to Smollett, I realized that the engine of the story was my own memories of lying in bed as a child imagining malign beings creeping towards me in the dark, while everyone else in the house slept. The terrible solitude of this haunting and the fact that Smollett can’t bring himself to confide in anyone are what works for me. So in the end I stripped away all the interesting interior decoration (and even the gaslight—the poor boy has to use a candle!) and the sympathetic sister and made Smollett the hero of his own story.
—MARGO LANAGAN
Sean Williams
Number one New York Times–bestselling author Sean Williams has been called “the premier Australian speculative fiction writer of the age,” the “Emperor of Sci-Fi,” and the “King of Chameleons” for the diversity of his output, which spans fantasy, science fiction, horror, and even the odd poem. He has published thirty-five novels and seventy-five short stories. These include works for adults (Philip K. Dick Award–nominated Saturn Returns, Ditmar and Aurealis Award–winning The Crooked Letter), young adults (Locus-recommended The Storm Weaver & the Sand) and children (multiple award nominee The Changeling, and the Troubletwister series cowritten with Garth Nix). He lives with his wife and family in the dry, flat lands of South Australia.
SEAN WILLIAMS
The Jade Woman of the Luminous Star
YOU MUST GET me out of here, Michaels. I have important work to do.”
Those were the first words uttered by Hugh Gordon in my presence. I remember them clearly. On the one hand, I was relieved that he was willing to acknowledge me as a fellow professional, for a man of his standing, even in his dire circumstances, might have been tempted to dismiss me as a physician of no great renown, as in fact I am (and would very much like to return to being, Inspector Berkeley, once you have read this deposition). On the other hand, he seemed genuinely convinced that I could effect his release.
When I declared that this was quite impossible, he became irritable and aggressive. He accused me of gloating, of malpractice, even of spying. The